Matthias Kessels

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Matthijs Kessels (20 May 1784, Maastricht - 4 March 1836, Rome) was a Dutch sculptor.

[edit] Biography

Matthijs (also Matthias or Matthieu) was first apprenticed to a goldsmith at Venlo, but went early to Paris and studied at the Beaux Arts. In 1806 he found his way to St. Petersburg, and abode there eight years, making silver and was models and sculptures of various kinds. In 1814 he returned to Paris and attached himself to the atelier of Girodet.

Finally, having decided to go to Rome, he was received into the studio of the Dane Bertel Thorvaldsen; interestingly he worked on the famous reliefs of "Day" and "Night" (1819). In a competition opened by the Venetian Antonio Canova for young artists, Kessels won the highest award with his "St. Sebastian pierced with arrows", a piece of frank and beautiful workmanship. For the Duke of Alba, Kessels executed his small "Disk-thrower reclining" and the "Cupid whetting his darts", for the Prince of Orange, "Paris resting" a colossal marble placed at Laeken which obtained for him the Belgian Order of Leopold; for the Duke of Devonshire, the heroic "Disk-thrower in action".

He also made a group in marble of figures in the Deluge and the tomb in Rome of the Countess de Celles, wife of the Ambassador of the Netherlands. Lesser works are the "Woman weeping over an Urn", the "Genius of Art" and a bust of Admiral Tromp.

Kessels excelled particularly in religious subjects: "Christ at the Column", colossal busts of Christ and the Virgin Mary, a low relief of the head of Our Saviour, the Four Evangelists in terra-cotta and a "Pieta". He was engaged on a "St. Michael overcoming the Hydra of Anarchy", for the church of Ste-Gudule, now co-cathedral in Brussels, when death claimed him at Rome, 3 March, 1836.

Kessels is not much known, but he belongs to the Roman School of sculpture, founded by Canova and Thorvaldsen, which adhered strictly to idealism and to the laws prescribed by the antique. He is one of the group with Schadow, Wolff and others. He was a member of the Academy of St. Luke and of the Institute of the Netherlands. A "Disk-thrower" by him is in the gardens of the Palais des Academies, Brussels.

[edit] Source

• "Matthias Kessels". Catholic Encyclopedia. (1913). New York: Robert Appleton Company. 

This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.